October, October
by melissaisdown
Summary: House, Cuddy, Halloween and identity. Oneshot. Set between 'Lucky Thirteen' and 'Joy' and co-authored by LJ's ashely west


_**October, October**_

The end of October is an ominous obstacle this year.

It's the middle of the semester and students crowd the halls in an effort to be educated, reminding patients and physicians that they're within the walls of a teaching hospital.

Fall is fickle. The Jersey weather is frigid in the morning, but warm when the glorious glow of an autumn sunset backlights the building.

The end of this month is highlighted by an event, an event many would rather avoid—and one attempted to in vain.

A symposium.

It's a faculty symposium and House hates that word, 'faculty.' It reminds him of the faculty lounge in grade school and makes him feel old and eternally excluded.

It's been so long since he attended one of these that he forgets the exact goings on at such a gathering but is certain that he'll be bored. He has to wear a tie, grin and bear it because he has no choice. Normally he'd resist, rebel, negotiate—but this time he didn't bother; it's no worse than being home alone and there he can't leer at Cuddy's cleavage. And he wants her to see he's okay. The loss of his father—or the man everybody thought was his father—still affected him, adding to the insurmountable anxiety, frustration and sorrow of the last six months.

House pretended to have a case, he tried to get out of it at the last minute but it didn't work. Cuddy knew. Her cynicism is as acute as his.

So now he steps into a lecture hall, his limp illusive as he drowns in the congestion, past the people, to a seat at the end of a long table. He sighs and swallows a handful of vicodin as he realizes he's become a member of 'the faculty' and almost laughs when he realizes this is the extent of the responsibility.

There's an activity syllabus, a nicety that unnecessarily outlines the evening's itinerary.

_'The symposium will facilitate and encourage intellectual discourse and the sharing of ideas among peers and across disciplinary boundaries. It will promote cohesion and communication among the diverse groups and sub-disciplines that together comprise each department of medicine. Finally it offers the opportunity __to celebrate the beginning of a new academic year and enjoy the company and stimulation of colleagues and friends after the summer.'_

The mission statement summarizes the pointless endeavor and House thinks about summer and how another season is nearing its end. He hopes he doesn't have to say much tonight because he's feeling unusually inarticulate.

Cuddy comes in, her poise and stride demanding attention as the droning noise of constant conversations becomes a few last fragmentary words. Confidently, she stands in front of an audience of white coats.

At the back of the room, in the middle of the last row of chairs, somebody sits wearing a black hooded cloak, holding a scythe in one hand and a pen in the other, making her remember.

It's Halloween.

Panning the hall she realizes a few other people are in inappropriate garb for an academic function. But this is college and a relatively informal requisite, so she tries not to stare.

Left then right; she looks down the table at her doctors, her colleagues, her employees. She doesn't see House on the first glance; he's not protruding as much as she had anticipated. But he's here. With leather wingtips over argyle socks, he almost looks like a professional, shoving his PSP in his pocket when Cuddy starts to speak.

"Good evening," she says and he rolls his eyes.

House knows the irony of the date. Scheduling a symposium on the 31st is the scariest of scenarios. He's surprised so many young people showed up instead of partying at a macabre masquerade or egging each other's apartments. He has fond memories of collegiate hallow eves.

Cuddy continues with the introduction and Silverman follows with pedantic rhetoric about oncological studies in lieu of Wilson's attendence. Wilson, why did she tell him about the adoption first?

Scrutinizing his beautiful boss's profile, House tries to rationalize Wilson as a character reference, but a little jealousy lingers.It dissipates with his refusal to blink; he tries to draw her attention by leaning on an elbow and never looking away.

Cuddy's not Cuddy, he thinks. She's never been Lisa, not to him, and now she's even farther from her actual identity. It's a guise she can't shed, more than a title or burden, her job has consumed her. She's a silhouette shrouded in her own success, listening as she tries to make a difference. A rose by any other name—

She's the hospital now. She's every patient and every doctor and soon she'll be a mother.

Maybe.

House sits as stiff as a scarecrow, wishing he had more hay for hair and a heart at that. The suit, the tie, the socks plus any shoes other than sneakers,he's wearing a costume as much as the reaper in the back row. Cuddy's in administrator mode. Both are being somebody else.

It's the post modern purpose of the holiday.

One day a year people can choose to be someone, anyone else and are accepted as more than impersonators. Tonight is that night, yet they sit the same as they always have.

When he's looked at her breasts long enough to make the doctor beside her blush, House starts studying the other heads of departments. He wonders how they all got here, how they worked and rose and earned their position.

He wonders how he got here.

The thought is interrupted when nephrology asks his opinion on something and he grumbles in agreement. Students are participating in the discussion now and he leans back in his chair, having done his share and contemplating a nap.

Cuddy's paying attention, a debt and her duty. Her head is tipped to one side, her expression intent as she examines him out of the corner of her eye. Things are different now. After an advent of accidents and the apex of his arrogance, without Wilson, House hasn't been House.

Right now he's nobody she's ever known. He's solemn and sexy, silent and probably plotting a subterfuge. He's being suspiciously obedient and she wonders if it's resignation, if he just doesn't care enough to argue anymore. She knows he's changed; everything's changed. The old constant of nothing ever staying constant being the only constant—and her head begins to ache.

It's complicated, shifting her focus to a more personal perspective. Lucas is here, loyal and lost in the crowd. It's been a long time since she's had a personal life.

He likes her and he's tenacious; it seems sincere enough. She wants more though, to be loved, adored and afraid of needing it. She knows she can't always get what she wants.

A few hours pass and House's stomach growls, lamenting its emptiness. Time and Einstein pat each other on the back and somewhere in the crowd,

an hourglass turns and sand begins to slip through a metaphor of fingers. Nearly comatose when he sees Cuddy stand, the sound of her voice concludes the symposium and people applaud, celebrating the expiration of an educational convocation.

_**the ghost of a lie**_

The first sip of cider floods her senses with the flavor of fall. Cuddy stands alone but among her peers at the symposium's reception. Luke (he lets her call him) is gone or was never here, just a hope. Her soul's usurped by homesickness when the waft of an autumn breeze pushes through open doors as people leave in pairs.

This time of the year leaves her reminiscing and wishing, knowing what she once had and everything she still doesn't.

Kids come into the ER with belly aches from candy overdoses or cuts and scrapes and broken bones from practical jokes and each child's face, every parent holding a hand, makes her long for nothing more than the day that she hears a giggling group of children and can distinguish her own son or daughter's.

In a few days she'll have the opportunity, a baby of her own to carve jack-o-lanterns and choose a princess or pirate costume, to wear a number beside them in a parade, to check every piece of candy after they go trick or treating, to give to a new generation what she had—

Childhood and children, who she was and who she wants to be have veiled who she really is. Until tonight.

House is equally adrift. It's a personal paralysis, sitting and certain now that they're both nobody.

Days ago the blue sky and false sense of summer inspired him and House pursued hope's folly with some justified reason for visiting her. He was bored and lonely and it'd been a while since he'd ogled her ass or insulted her with scoffing superiority.

He wanted to see her.

The concrete under his feet was slippery, the air crisp as he dismounted his bike cursing at the carburetor, kicking bright yellow leaves along the way.

There was a pumpkin on her porch step and House stood and stared at the anomaly. It was a lie, in a way. The oval orange fruit was a deviation from the Cuddy he knows, inconsistent with his perception of the woman. He never knew she liked the season or the holiday, nor had he suspected she had time for decorating.

He wondered about the sides of her he doesn't know—the homemaker, the sister, the daughter, the mother-to-be, the girlfriend; anyone but the administrator. The hidden parts of her are what he'd most like to know, now.

So House blinked and stepped past the pumpkin and onto her porch. He smelled dinner, something homemade, turkey or pot roast, it was a clue. Glaring through the window into her dimly lit dining room he saw she was eating with Lucas and his own stomach sank.

It was the stagnant shock of seeing that someone else had discovered a path he might have followed, a path that as its possibility disappeared before his eyes, he knew was the one he was meant to take.

Confusion, anger and envy culminated, dissipated and transitioned into acceptance before he could turn away. Cuddy was smiling, laughing, even touching another man's hand and House could only stand a crippled voyeur incapable of doing anything except watch.

He'd lost the game, a game he could never win. An old man, a sore loser, House raced home that night, forcing his bike to go faster. He poured and drank enough whiskey to pass out, trying to forget her face, the ghost of what they were once as he confronted the implausibility of twice.

House knew they'd gone on a date, he didn't know Cuddy could cook. He didn't know she was adopting. Now he wonders if the woman he's known half his life he never really knew at all.

For a while he dwelled in the dregs of the doldrums. Acceptance was an illusion, nobody likes to lose, him most of all. The next day he looked in the mirror.

A depressed drunk, a drug addicted doctor—he's no one without Wilson and Cuddy.

Here and now they're both alone, standing close, sad almost. Maybe it wasn't betrayal; Cuddy never quit him, she just thought she lost the man a long time ago -to Stacy, to prostitutes, to pills. It's a lost cause, he's actually submitted to her by attending the symposium, how pathetic.

Cuddy chastises herself for the wistfulness of wishing she was a wife, both doctors gravitate toward reality in the same instant, their eyes meet from across the room.

They blink. Wink. Walk.

The cookies are stale but the pie is fresh and Cuddy picks up a piece, moving away from the table and toward the man.

"House."

He chases the last of his vicodin with cider, puckering at the taste. Cuddy hands him the plate and a replenished bottle, both appropriately orange and appreciated.

"Pumpkin pie and a prescription...

Almost makes up for the last three hours," an incomplete complaint as he shoves half the piece of pie into his mouth.

She thinks of saying how he must be starving since Wilson hasn't been around to cook or pay for his lunch anymore, but doesn't. Cuddy reaches for a napkin and when she turns around House is gone. Perhaps he was only ever a hungry specter, a premonition in pain.

Later after she's watched everybody evacuate the lecture hall, Cuddy walks as if lost, forgetting her purpose until she finds herself within the empty corridors of the clinic. It's creepy and she thinks of goblins and ghouls and gourds, wishing she weren't alone, here or at all. The vacancy of her office is depressing and frightening, it's all she has to show for years of hard work, an unlit and hollow representation of herself.

She gets her coat and a few files and walks quickly to her car, a harvest moon eerily pale behind passing clouds. On the way a voice mumbles some profanity in the distance. It's House on his bike, choking an undead throttle, agonizingly aggravated because it won't start.

"Did you mid life crisis finally run out of gas?"

"It's the battery. And the carburetor and about fifty other things..." he trails off, knowing it doesn't matter.

Cuddy smiles, wicked with an effort to understand. Tonight he's a haunted House and she doesn't know why. Wilson's coming back, it's a start. He should be happy.

In the leather jacket his tie remains but the sneakers have returned. She shivers seeing the visible vapor of his breath, the result of a vocal sigh of frustration, nearing resignation, his face wan except for bright cheeks blush from the cold. A swirl of scattered foliage, freckles of fading color, fly by their feet as the wind forces them forward.

"Come on, I'll take you home."

House tries the throttle again, pouts then grimaces, defeated. "Are you sure there's enough room on your broomstick for the both of us?"

Cuddy ignores him and starts to walk away. He follows close behind and enjoying the view.

The ride's a quiet one, forfeited foreplay in the front seat. It's the edge of indian summer and dusk as House tips his cane back and forth between his knees, uncomfortable being a passenger. Red and dead leaves dance in the white line of headlights and the hum of the engine makes the silence more static than serene.

Cuddy the driver is adept but when she concentrates she lets her guard down. He considers taking advantage of her preoccupation, distracting her and discovering something. Or rediscovering something.

But it's his perspective that's shifting; it has been for a while. She sat at his bedside with tear filled eyes when he was in a coma; she breathed life back into him when his heart stopped. For a while House considered that, that maybe some part of her liked him, not all of him, but enough. That maybe it was more than the fear of losing an asset to her hospital, more than losing a friend. Once they had been something more, but only once.

There's nothing sentimental about a one night stand. She's his boss, he _can't_ like her. And he doesn't. He's just curious if she likes him, if she ever has.

The woman's gorgeous and he gawks, his libido making the accidental affair the haphazard that's haunting him most. It's a ghost of what could have been or what shouldn't have been. He stops tipping his cane and stares at her in an attempt to have an epiphany.

Cuddy turns her head when she feels the intention of his examination soften. It's always intuition; she's known him too long.

"So you're an administrative whore again this Halloween? Don't you ever get tired of that costume, you've been wearing it for more than a decade?"

"Me? The 'Narcissus with a limp' act got old a long time ago too, House."

House laughs, the smug laugh of amused angst when he knows they're in the middle of a round of offensive flirtation.

"Most hookers would find a phallic prop a turn on. So tell me, do you take checks? Because if not, you're going to have to stop at the ATM before we get to my place.

I don't have any candy but I do have something you can suck..."

Cuddy shoots him a look of severe exasperation.

"...on."

He steals a glance at Cuddy, seeing nothing.

"Role playing Cuddy, everybody's doing it these days. Or just today.

Like you, you get to do the whole motherhood thing - all of the shopping and none of the stretch marks."

House fidgets, tugs at his tie. Tries to swallow. Fails.

Through the window there is no sky-- only a dark, omniscient tent that drapes the tops of the streets and is in reality a vast approaching army of snowflakes. It was warm during the day but tonight the world will freeze.

The weather's contradiction is the same as these two passenger's personalities.

"Thank you," Cuddy says, her voice breaking the silence.

"Okay."

He decides not to ask.

"What for?"

He asks anyway.

"For coming to the symposium."

A beat.

"I know you and Wilson—"

"Oh, so you're going to psychoanalyze _then_ take advantage of me."

"You haven't been the same without him. And now that he's..."

"I'm surprised you noticed in between your sexcapade sessions with Magnum, P.I."

"And your dad..."

The car makes a turn.

"Why do you care about my personal life all of a sudden?"

"Because the hospital depends on you being _you_, functioning by whatever dysfunctional means necessary."

They reach his building. Cuddy parks close to the curb.

"Because you're a friend, House. I just want you to know I'm here."

"You shouldn't be," he says low, almost to himself. Then he opens the door and on his step out looks at her.

"Leave."

Cuddy exhales, disappointed at the incompletion and watches him limp away. Before she can put the car into drive she glimpses an orange bottle on the passenger seat. It's House's vicodin and she knows if she doesn't take it in he'll be pounding on her door or window in the middle of the night, a sound that brings to the surface a devastating fear, reminding her she's middle aged, unmarried and alone in the driver's seat, in life, that _everything's_ incomplete.

So she pulls the keys out of the ignition, picks up the prescription and gets out of the car, as unsuspecting as a scream queen.

_**a trick, a treat, the truth**_

"House," she says, on the outside of an open door.

"House?"

The apartment's dim and appears empty. A foot crosses the threshold quietly, entering an atmosphere of foreboding forbearance. Her eyes scan the room before depositing the bottle on his coffee table and turning around.

House doesn't say 'boo' but the sight of him looming, tall, close, unexpected scares her and Cuddy's first reaction is to push. Two tight fists find his ribs and do physically what she's been doing emotionally for years, push him away.

House staggers then falls to the ground, the hard thump of his frame coinciding with the lights flickering then turning off, leaving them in complete darkness.

"Dammit!"

"What just happened?"

"Idiot kids do this every year. There's not a light on in the entire building

and it'll be hours before the super even tries to find the fuse box."

There's an awkward beat and he can hear the sound of her shuffling, rearranging herself in the dark. After a minute House feels a hand on his ankle, his shin, over his knee, across his thigh and moving up.

"I hope that's your cane," Cuddy whispers.

A disconcerting silence.

"Give me your hand," she says straining and frustrated.

He reaches out and following a few moments of mutually groping air they clasp hands and she helps him stand. Three legs supporting two people, he's heavy and they lack levity stammering as a single form, struggling to stay on their feet.

They stand together, still and waiting. Waiting for the lights to come on, waiting for the world to end, Cuddy's hand is still in his and it's a strange consolation in the black room, holding onto something. Warm, soft, accomplished hands, hands he knew when they ambitious at Ann Arbor, hands that brought him back to life more than once. There's a sullen timidity in her stance, she's close, their fingers twined but it's only a vague affection.

The fragrance of her perfume is faint familiarity. He imagines that they've never been farther apart and can taste her scent that by any other name smells as sweet.

Somehow it enhances the certainty of her presence. The silence is interrupted with a few sound effects, ambience unaware: the kitchen sink dripping, the creak of the wood floor, echoes of audible individuality. Fear rises with these sounds until his worst is confirmed.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Cuddy says, her hand abandoning his.

Seized suddenly by nyctophobia House panics and before she's out of his reach takes her wrist and pulls her to him. She stumbles so that he catches her around the waist, feeling goosebumps on the small of her back and a terrified tension in her chest. It's an effortless embrace but the opaque space between them is still too much.

House leans in, close enough to breathe her breath, blow it back across her lips and with open eyes he kisses her. A surreal seduction of susceptibility, they find each other, becoming who they are.

Rash, relentless it's a captivating first kiss, except it's not their first.

But the taste, the touch, the fleeting and the unforgettable are now as invisible as they are invincible. Blurred traces of deja vu fade as the kiss continues.

Her tongue tangles with his and Cuddy says something into his mouth, he swallows her doubt but reluctantly pulls back. They stand mute, feeling the reverberations of their voiceless surrender.

Cuddy hears it. The beat his heart skips, House holding his breath, waiting for her to let go, waiting for the ground to slip away beneath his feet again.

The frisson of reminiscent desire running through her is more than nostalgia, she could grasp the reins of the past in an instant but that's not what this is about. It's more than memory, more than love.

It's a loaded gun.

And they've had their fingers on the trigger for years.

Cuddy kisses him. The beard's abrasively brutal in the black, scraping and startling her, she kisses him higher, wanting her lips on his skin and settles for his sharp cheekbone and another near his nose.

The aimless and sloppy reciprocity leaves him relieved but no less lost and when her mouth meets his something breaks. She parts her lips opening herself to him as strong arms wrap around her, locking tight and permanent.

They stand and kiss, cherishing the contact, a long, slow redolent rediscovery. Then they sway, starting toward the bedroom in a desultory dance of dominance.

Petrified hands incapable of letting go move to her hips as House walks backwards, his knee bent between her legs - the blind leading the blind. Cuddy splays her palms over his chest and leans in with each step, curling her toes against the draft as she slips out of her heels. She pushes him up against a wall when it's in the way and laughs when he lifts her off of her feet, a few inches shorter without shoes. The heat rising from her low neckline as she bites his tongue, her nails on the back of his neck - her constancy and control -give the oblivious effort a touch of grace.

The unutterable bliss of blindness makes their destination destiny. Lunar virtue reflects off of frosted window panes, a bright round moon hanging expectantly in the crystalline sky, the only witness as they trip and tumble to the bed. Their bodies are in harmony on the mattress, like a secret kept, the supercilious made sacred.

With the lucid lunacy of what they've initiated, what in the dark doesn't have to be real, they realize they're at the mercy of a purblind weapon, they're hostages being held at gunpoint.

Cuddy's on top of him, a finger unraveling the knot of his necktie, she kisses his chin and considers the demands and negotiations of the situation. It's always life and death with him, there's always more at stake than they can see.

When the tie's undone she stops, bowing her head, eyelashes batting against his neck, she kisses the scar and his jaw and the cold tip of his ear. Fingers brush through her hair in an attempt at romantic resonance and she doesn't resist. Her hand meanders down his body, finding the bottom button of his shirt, starting a slow ascent until it's open and off.

House's teeth anchor her bottom lip as she covets the warmth of his bare chest.

He raises his forehead and rests it against hers, their noses crowding comfortably close. After a moment he kisses her softly, the dry crease of his lips tender against hers, telling her without words everything he could never admit in the light.

The argyle socks he's wearing, trying to be someone else, come off and Cuddy thinks of white roses and a sacrificed spotlight wishing they weren't eclipsed by shadows and circumstance; wishing there was more motivation than self loathing and rebirth, the unceremonious celebration of the Celtic new year.

He cradles her head between his hands and pretends they're only the night, the kiss, the moment- whoever they want to be.

Gradually Cuddy submits to gravity, grinding against him, making House groan. She can only imagine his face: the scarred nose; his mouth a mirror of mood inclined to droop perceptibly in moments of unhappiness, it's rare to see an upward arch; she wonders if he's smiling now. She wants to make him smile, she wants to _see_ him smile and to see his blue eyes, an honest constant, the color defines him -whether alert or aroused of half closed in a sardonic squint, she wants to see the shade of him seeing her.

Wet lips and the poetry of their pounding hearts, the deprivation of a singular sense magnifies all the others. House hears leaves falling to the ground, feels her flesh on his and breathes, breaking the kiss. His hands move up her stomach, over every muscle, taut and thrumming. He unbuttons her blouse rough and impatient, a breathless immediacy in the moment.

Now he resents the anonymity of obscurity. He wants to see Cuddy, her body, the bosom he's about to expose, he wants to see the woman, all of her. The naked expression when she comes, when he comes - he wants to know he's making love to her, whoever she is - if only a devoted doppleganger. It is just an eternal repetition of the same? Not in the dark, in the dark the details are left to the imagination. And the "I" hides itself in what is only imaginable about a person, what's different in the day, what can't be unveiled, uncovered, conquered- Lisa Cuddy, the one he loves who he may never know again the same as tonight. The precious dissimilarity, the conquest to discover, hold, have it in his hands is the last puzzle to be pursued.

House sucks the nape of her neck, his mouth moving across her shoulder then down until it finds her breasts with slick oral precision. Her heart's alight with his touch, eyes shut seeing the glow of crimson and rose. Sideswiping her cheek

with his, House tears the blouse from her body, thumbs fumbling with the zipper of her skirt before either can react. There's an urgency as she slides out of it, like a blindfold's been removed and she can finally see what she wants, the abstract aesthetic of the man under her, with her, holding her, an impossible reunion, his body beneath hers in bed again, inevitability borrowed from beauty.

More than physical, it is the dissolution of the individual, the recapitulation of the otherwise imperceptible.

It is love. The sightless, sensual contrariety that is _their_ love. Tonight their love is freedom, an escape from the jobs, the roles, this love lets them flee it all. It's suicide. They're pulling the trigger and murdering the people they are every other day of the year, inheriting a new identity, letting who they are _to_ each other be who they are _with_ each other, finally.

It is a solitary shot in the dark.

With profound passion their mouths merge, making more than love, making a promise, a promise to stay this way always, in the sun, the light, the bright burning torch of their other lives. The length of their bodies meet and melt, reveling in the intoxication of sensory impressions.

It's a persistent presence pushing against her, his erection hard and proud under layers of lies, cloaked in clothes that aren't his. Cuddy wants him out of them and inside of her. The throb, the thrill, there's no feeling like it. His thighs tremble with the temptation to thrust, she'll have sexual sovereignty if they continue this way. Nearly naked she's extraordinarily wet when a few of House's fingers coast across the moisture seeping through her panties. It's a massage of magnetic mirth, he knows she's smiling, he remembers what her face looks like when she lolls her head in response to the pleasure he provokes. Cuddy whimpers, a weak sexy sound that makes House's heart implode- creating a heaven in the hollow of his chest half way between ecstasy and immortality.

Sex seems inevitable. Penetration, here and now, will be more though.

It will be selflessness in action, the abandonment of tautology, coinciding coalescence. More even than physical fusion, they know now that they can only be themselves with each other.

House considers depth. He doesn't want this to be shallow, he does want to bury himself deep and stay inside her until morning. The incredibly tight clench, smooth, slow, a ceaseless connection- the exhilarating escalation to euphoric escape. There is no experience comparable to making Cuddy come.

But it can't be the same, they're different in the dark. It's all blind faith, years of trust, tolerance, love resurrected and requited. Skin superimposed and identical oneness, though only a temporary transformation the difference is desire. They want this, they need it and now is the time.

House is motionless except for the tips of his fingers kneading into her back before he turns them over. Together on their sides they face each other, gasping, grinning, equals in existential equilibrium. His hand skims up her thigh then down, tugging at the thong and lifting her leg to drape it over his. Cuddy palms his bulge, teasing before she unzips. His lips ease up to the supple curve of her ear as he unhooks her bra while her hand pulls down on his pants. This is how it will happen, side by side and seeing nothing, a second time.

A perfect pressure, a slow stroke through cotton, her palm rouses rapture with a ruthless rhythm until he gasps, raging and growing, too close to eruption.

House kisses her, one last long deep kiss, just taste and touch and the sound of unbridled anticipation, of exceeded expectations. His hand moves to hers with the intention of releasing the pulsing heat she holds but before he can -

The lights come on.

Like a thief in the night, reality has stolen their chance to change. They stare in stunned stagnancy at the sight of each other. Cuddy's hair is comically mussed, her mascara smudged, she's just a dropped jaw and pink tongue struggling to believe they're witnessing the revelation of unexpected exposure. The '_faculty'_ of vision, a redundant word recently, is a curse. House is speechless, shock turning into sadness as she sees the man in front her for what feels like the first time.

Grave surprise fills his face and the miserable desperation of failure crushes his heart, a heavy weight. His age is exaggerated by the gray comprising what's left of his hair, the lines in his face are long, prominent. Her hand pulls back when she glances the head of his glistening shaft brimming from the top of his boxerbriefs and her eyes shift to see that her lipstick has made his mouth a ring of rouge. When she gets a peripheral view of her own beckoning breasts Cuddy pulls at the sheet and covers herself.

In the process of concealing their nudity- the last few bare shreds of truth between them - both realize they've dodged a bullet and she breaks the bond, her leg sliding off of his. House rolls onto his back sighing, supine and senescent. They can't do this now, there's no breaking the spell of the present when they've never even exorcised the demons of the past.

The clock's blinking 12:00 and it's not wrong, October's over. They're another day older and farther apart, together. A painful paradox they've long perpetuated. He knows she's going to leave, it's just the same. It's the force of some phantom, an uninspired spirit of their single transcendence, a potential fate forever lost. It is a truth and a tragedy that can't be explained, a question that's never been answered—this force intangible as air, more definite than death. House closes his eyes and waits for it.

Cuddy wants to pull away, leave, she wants to go home, brew chai tea and tell herself it's all been a blind blunder. But she can't. It's love and there's no use lying. After an indecisive moment she leans away leaving him cold, alone again, his only companion another empty space.

She flips a switch, extinguishing the incandescent illumination.

A stream of starlight sifts through closed curtains and she sees House, a scared silhouette at her side. The chill of her toes traces his ankle under the covers, her head's on his pillow when she closes her eyes, unaware that she's smiling, knowing she already is where she's meant to be.

Hope, history, an aura of melancholy happiness, House knows it's not tragedy. It's victory, the dim but deep unspoken intimacy that is theirs. Cuddy's going to be a mother and he's with her, at least for now. Smitten at the sight he watches her with curious adoration. She's here and she wants to stay which means she doesn't want to be with anyone else. She's his until morning. And he's hers, lost, afraid, her arm across his abdomen, the most living part of him is hers.

Possession and perception, gravity and a parade of yesterday's ghosts, it all blurs together when he blinks, curling an arm around her, bringing them close.

Tonight is a tantamount transition. It is the solution to all the riddles, the key to all the mysteries, the birth of a new utopia, a world where he can love her without the aggressive stupidity of sex. When day breaks their hearts may shatter, it might all fall apart- fall like withered leaves with only the memories of a shadowy season to console their lonely souls.

No matter the effort, the denial, their love is a handicap. They see each other in the light but love each other in the darkness. Invisibility and ignorance, the triumph of tonight is that's it's not completely visionless.

It's a new day, a more mature month where they have absolution without resolution, the undeniable quintessence of their relationship. They'll dream of an endless October, of time standing still, of being who they are more than once in a lifetime.

It's the autumn of their lives with summer a forgotten apparition and winter an approaching ending, it is still fall for now. The atmosphere, within and without, seems pervaded by a deliberate rendition of pathetic fallacy, emphasizing the duality of individuality, but it's all a drowsy doubt, relativity instead of objectivity as House finally closes his eyes.

October, an obstacle overcome and one night to be more than impostors, more than impersonators, the personification of their ambiguous personalities. Life is time spent being someone else but for a while longer they can lay as more than dean and diagnostician, abominated mirrors of their other selves.

October, missed opportunity and mistaken identities, there may soon be another chance to change. Their true and eventual love, rising like the phoenix from its own ashes, might be born again in its mysterious and unfathomable haunts.

Lovers, colleagues, friends, House falls asleep with his hand over her hand over his heart as it breaks, wondering who they'll be when they wake.

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Thanks for reading, please review.


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